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Laila! has flourished more in the year leading up to her 19th birthday than some artists do in decades. The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and producer first broke through on TikTok with spacey viral ditties “Like That” and “Not My Problem,” showing her intrinsic ear for R&B’s current wave and its off-center potential. She quickly followed that with her purely DIY debut album, Gap Year!, which helped nab Tyler, the Creator and Solange as fans.
This wunderkind also happens to be the daughter of lauded East Coast rhymer Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def. But Laila! has another vocalist from a famous family on her mind when we speak over Zoom — one who also had to prove her star power to the world.
“Janet Jackson is someone that I admire so, so much,” she says. “Especially from her starting so young and making that transition into womanhood publicly. It’s a weird thing to have to do, but she was stunning and flawless at every stage and level of her career. That’s something that I definitely want to be able to do.”
Laila, who was born in 2006, notes R&B’s transition from gated reverb snares to more hip-hop-oriented sonics in the 1990s, citing Brandy, Aaliyah, and Lauryn Hill as influences. If the teenager were any older, she easily could’ve been a key player in the hip-hop soul movement of years past, but since she was raised decades after Jackson took Control, Laila! looks to the singer’s janet. album as a touchstone. Gap Year! has a similarly energetic and affectionate tone, intermingled with dreamy, television-inspired textures that cushion Laila! in a sweet spot of innocence.
“A lot of ’90s sitcoms were really special, and even ’80s sitcoms,” she says. “I remember always being kind of enthralled with the Full House intro. I feel like as a producer, when you listen to anything that has music, you kind of hear it in a different way.”
Tyler, the Creator has been a particularly important Laila! champion, even inviting her to perform at Camp Flog Gnaw last November. This month, she’s embarking on her first headlining tour, which hits 10 cities.
Laila! recalls chatting with Tyler after she performed at his festival: “I was like, ‘Dude, this is crazy, I can’t believe how many people came to my stage.’ He was like, ‘Dude, you’re up. What do you mean you can’t believe how many people came to your stage?’ And I was just like, Damn, maybe he’s right. I was shocked the whole time.”
Although Laila! is still getting used to the attention being on her after years of beatmaking in her bedroom studio, she’s starting to see how much she has in common with her fellow artists. “As a kid, you kind of feel far removed from the people that you admire,” she says. “Not in a bad way, just in the scope of it and how big people seem. But then you’re like, ‘Oh my god, we really just love the same thing.’ I feel less like a little kid; I feel like I’m actually doing this and I actually care about it and that’s why I’m here.”
A part of why Laila’s here is her willingness to take a chance on her vocal and production skills, both of which she’s proud of. She’s used GarageBand since she was 14, and she has words of encouragement for other young musicians.
“Obviously, be open to learning, but also don’t let anyone cut off your creative instincts, ’cause those are the things that are going to make you grow,” she says. “Those are the muscles that you need to develop on your own as a producer to intuitively figure things out yourself.”
Laila! also slams the misconception that women aren’t behind the boards as much as they are in the recording booth. Solange has crafted rough sketches of songs on her iPhone, brought them to life during jam sessions and, separately, composed a New York City Ballet score. Janet Jackson, Lauryn Hill, and Mariah Carey have all received Grammy nominations for Producer of the Year, but as of 2025, a woman has yet to take home an award in that category. So when Laila! speaks on the possibilities of female producers like herself, she isn’t just referring to those following her path —she wants respect for her progenitors, too.
“I don’t think that girls aren’t interested in music production or that we’re not producers,” Laila! says. “I think we are; it’s just no one really sees it.”
She continues, “It doesn’t make sense that the statistics are saying that 96 percent of producers in the U.S. are male. There are so many women that are artists that are mainstream artists that people don’t even know are actually producers, as well.”
As if the artist nicknamed “Baby Genius” hasn’t accomplished enough at a tender age, Laila! tells me that she plans to record a Spanish-language album — something that her abuela, known to Gap Year! fans as Mami Nelly, can embrace.
“I don’t want people to forget that I am Dominican and I do speak Spanish — not fluently, but I’m getting there, OK?” she says. “I’m first-generation. It’s part of my culture and also part of who I am. I just want to be able to connect with as many people as possible, and Spanish is a beautiful language.”
Rather than trying to fit the mold, Laila! is poised to take her internet-savvy charm global by following her own instincts.
“Gap Year!, I wrote a lot of those songs when I was still 16,” she says. “So now, I’m not just a kid. I’m becoming a young woman, and that’s something to be celebrated.”
